Bret Louis Stephens (born November 21, 1973) is an American journalist who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2013.[1] He works for The Wall Street Journal as the foreign-affairs columnist and the deputy editorial page editor, responsible for the editorial pages of the Journal's European and Asian editions. From 2002 to 2004, he was editor in chief of the Jerusalem Post.[2]

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Stephens was born in New York City,[3] the son of Xenia and Charles J. Stephens, a former vice president of General Products, a chemical company in Mexico.[4][5] His parents were both secular Jews. His paternal grandfather had changed the family surname from Ehrlich to Stephens (after poet James Stephens).[6] He was raised in Mexico City, where his father worked. In his adolescence he attended boarding school at Middlesex School in Massachusetts. After graduation, Stephens studied political philosophy at the University of Chicago. He earned a master’s in comparative politics [5] from the London School of Economics. He is married to Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, a music critic who writes for the New York Times. The couple have three children and reside in New York City.[7][8]

Stephens began his career at the Journal as an op-ed editor in New York and later worked as an editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal Europe in Brussels. In 2006 he took over the “Global View” column from George Melloan when he retired. In 2009 he was named deputy editorial page editor following the retirement of Melanie Kirkpatrick.

Stephens won the annual Pulitzer Prize for Commentary recognizing his 2012 columns for the Journal, citing “incisive columns on American foreign policy and domestic politics, often enlivened by a contrarian twist.”[1]

Stephens authored the book America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder (ISBN 978-1591846628), released in November 2014. The book presents the case that America has been retreating from its role as the “world’s policeman” in recent decades, and that this trend will lead to ever greater world problems.